Is the women in games debate good or bad for women in games?

How is someone who plays Farmville for four hours a day any less of a gamer than someone who plays Team Fortress 2 for four hours a day?

 

Hard to quantify really but nobody will question you calling yourself a gamer if you have a 360, Genesis, Atari 2600, etc. My mother plays Farmville and what have you on Facebook but I'd never call her a gamer. My grandmother used to play Shanghai on the 'ol SMS years back but I wouldn't call her a gamer.

Simply playing games makes you a gamer by one definition. Being a part of the gaming culture is an entirely different thing than merely playing Angry Birds while in line at the grocery store.

 

This.

There's false feminists trolling the MRM, there's dumb-ass macho assholes being rude, there's "Gurl Gamerz" that are attention whores, and there's people who get their Jimmies Rustled.

Let's ignore all these dumb shits and go back to gaming.

I don't care if men or women play with me, and I don't even play online.

Don't fuck with my games, and I'll keep playing. Gender is non related.

 

Exactly.

Not to mention when they cry and moan about Women in games. They only look at the few popular examples and they even completely don't even understand some of those (Such as Cortana in Halo).

There are a ton of normal and strong women in games.

Guys get sexualized just as much (Though don't play "Damsel in distress" but I don't find that sexist personally) but no guy gives a shit,because we know it's not real and has no bearing on real life.
People get butthurt because women then go and decide to further the shit they complain about by dressing up like sexualized characters and get sexually harassed or have inappropriate photo's taken of them without permission. And then there are others that say "WELL Men don't get sexually harrassed like women!" as if that makes it OK for Men to be sexualized in some form. But not women.

 

this is all bullshit. when it comes to games themselves, there's plenty of different types of women -- yet -- these fuckwads feminists (mostly white knighting males, who believes they are morally superior to you, and also act as the voice of women everywhere, which itself is pretty sexist) are not satisfied, bitching and moaning as if they are genuinely offended by this sensationalist faux- outrage.

- sorceress' tits in dragon's crown; writter posts a terrible piece that has no right to be called an article, insulting kamitani's art, saying it must've been made by a 14-year old while damn right he knows the artist is not 14. then when the dog bites back with a harmless joke where he posted a drawing where it sexualized men instead; the writer pretends to be all offended and surprised as if this wasn't the goal to begin with. a typical modern day feminist agenda witch-hunt. yawn.

- send 9-year old girl to "rpg camp" or "more females in STEM!" on kickstarter; mother is a millionaire which she earned all by scamming; domain squatting, patenting shit she didn't invent, trying to kickstars things she did not invent, selling it for 4x the amount. goes to kickstarter to scam some more money from idiots by abusing the all too popular "women in gamez! proving boyz wrong!" doesn't even follow kickstarter rules yet they are too pussy to shut it down because you just can't destroy a liitle girls "dreams" (it's not her dream). also all gamers which are now feminists, would rage about it, same with gaming sites etc, and she knows it. another faux-feminist abusing the situation.

- notch allegedly hiring "hookers" to socialize and dance at one of his parties; some little shit on twitter that automatically assumed the women there must definitely have been paid hookers, again, that itself is an extremely sexist assumption. then it was actually found out she is the one who has wanted to do something similar, but with males, how ironic. another typical modern day feminist agenda witch-hunt. yawn.

- tropes vs women in videogames by anita s; scam, if she really gave a fuck she would record and post those videos for free. she is the wrong person for the job, her videos suck and her facts are wrong. she should be classified as a gold digger. how ironic. another typical modern day feminist abusing the situation to make an exaggerated amount of easy money. yawn.

- god of war "bros before hoes"- trophy; seriously? you play god of war and pretend to be all fucking offended all of a sudden by the title of a trophy? just stop.

+ plenty of more "incidents" just the past few months.

i don't think the industry itself is sexist at all; white knight gamers these days act as if every single woman in the industry is surrounded by only mysoginistic pigs, which is far from the case.

tl;dr it's popular these days to pretend you're a feminist, pretend to get offended by the smallest things, to either; abuse the situation, seem morally superior.. it's about who can act the most offended, the fastest.. etc. it's like some kind of cult of insecurity and conformity.

 

it's like these people seriously pretend those who does not agree with their faux-feminist agenda are all cavemen/meatheads/dudebros (or all three!) who sees females as walking objects or vaginas.

what a fucking joke.

edit; however, when publishers say you can't market games with females.. that is something that is genuinely problematic and one of the things we should focus on. yet the drama's mentioned above seems more fun apparently.

 

That Kamitani issue did make me feel the guy had been brainwashed by some sort of cult.

What the actual fuck?

So Kamitani drew the girl like that. Big fucking deal. I hate to use those terms like "white knight", but... what the fuck is wrong with the article writer?

 

because it's popular to be a feminist today, you gotta take the smallest thing and act offended to gain credits by your peers. it's a fad (gamer/gaming industry- feminism, not real life feminism..), and you will obviously be there to experience the next one.

i mean, who's side are you on? the artist who is actually in the industry, earning money of his art. or the little douche (who wishes he was in the industry) trying to censor the artist because it doesn't mesh with his new agenda?

gaming "journalism" is terrible and this faux-outrage creates more harm than good, these folks are just currently too stuck-up to realize. don't try to censor the game.. censor yourself, please.

 

It's about questioning the intent behind it, not the quality of the art. Dragon's Crown art is all about women as male sexual fantasy and men as all male power fantasy (like most videogames). The writer at Kotaku was just being snarky with his comment, but I don't think he was totally wrong on questioning the art. Kotaku does suck about 99% of the time, tough.

Penny Arcade has a good strip about this so you can see the difference between a male power fantasy and a male sexual fantasy.: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/04/24

I loved Muramasa on the Wii, but will definitively skip Dragons Crown since I don't find those designs appealing at all.

If you had already seen her channel before, you would have noticed that Anita already was doing her videos for free, it was just a chance to make it into a bigger and better project. That people voluntarily donated so much money means that a lot of people believe she does have a point in her work, or that a voice like that deserves to be heard.

I feel that most of the issue begins with a lack of empathy. There's a lot of "If it doesn't affect me therefore we should not question things or improve them" going on, but it is slowly changing tough.

 

Such as? I can't really think of ANY games where guys are sexualized. Maybe the Cho Aniki series, but that's played mainly for laughs.

Is this really the level of discussion we're on here?

 

I could have phrased this more eloquently, yes.

What I meant to say is - if Kamitani drew the girl like that, and the article writer did not consider the drawing appropriate, then he should definitely stop looking at Kamitani's art, as it offends him.

Calling Mr. Kamitani a 14 year old, or raising a huge faux-feminist debate demanding all games to change to accomodate his sensibilities - while at the same time calling the author names, was not the most clear-headed approach.

Mostly because he seems to be forcefully catering to a demographic, and creating moral outrage where there really is just a matter of taste. And excessively weird proportions.

 

To be fair, those character designs were hilariously bad. Can you seriously imagine trying to play that game in the living room among family and friends without getting embarrassed even slightly?

It was clever of the artist to reply back but I don't think it should've went any further than that. The artist should not have felt the need to apologize as he did nothing wrong expect draw a female that makes Tifa Lockhart look modest by comparison, and the writer should not have responded to the artists reply other than a small update to the original article saying "Hey cool, the guy responded with a sense of humor. Right on.".

And that's just off the top of my head. There are many, many more examples.

Not that I'm offended by it or anything. Women are sexualized in those games as well, and I do think it is to a far greater degree than men (Remember Miranda from ME2? So many blatant ass shots...).

With nearly every paperback romance novel I come across in stores it seems there is always a shirtless white guy with six pack abs and minor chest hair on the cover. Am I offended by the way my gender is being portrayed? No, because I know the target audience is generally women, not men. So why is it an issue for feminists regarding video games when, like it or not, the main demographic for these kind of games are men?

Anita is a tool. People only donate so they can feel important and think they made a difference in something, they're the same people who think liking a status on facebook or signing an online petition equates them to the people in the past who fought for real justice and equality by actually going out and doing something about it. She has nothing relevant to say on the issue, no more or less than any of us do.

She is a radical pseudo-intellectual feminist that gives real feminists a bad name, makes poorly researched videos with cherry picked arguments and attempts to play the victim while simultaneously censoring opposing viewpoints. The video, the one that cost over $100,000 to make, was full of examples from media prior to the 1960's (King Kong, Popeye, etc). That would like me saying how racist the US is against blacks then using racist cartoons from the early 1900's as my evidence. No fucking shit, how about using some examples that are a bit more relevant? Not to mention basically every game she has an issue with was made in Japan, so maybe her problem has less to do with video games and more to do with Japanese society as a whole? If so, then why use video games as a scapegoat for her radical views on how women are treated in Japan? Maybe because she knows nobody would give a shit about her if she didn't?

 

well @ the original post: the girl you know seems to be a bit of a whiny quitter, online game = you will get shit from assholes. thats like letting kids saying the slept with your mom get to you.

assholes come in every walk of life and are an obstacle to overcome or ingnore and run over. the vast majority of male gamers do not give a shit if they're gaming with other males or females

this feminist surge is the biggest pile of artificial bullshit.

where there are certain in-equalities in the numbers game eg less (but by far and by no means none) strong female protagonists and characters this has been changing as the market has been changing.

what do they want? duchess nukem?

if they want more then get into the industry, get developing, get writing, produce rather than try to restrict and denounce.

the whole dead island riptide fuss was a complete joke.

just my opinions

 

I see a few "faux-feminism" comments.

What would "real feminism" in videogames be, then? Where has it been used, and by who? What is the endgame of it?

 

A common argument, but not necessary true. You see, sexism on the game industry actually prevents women from wanting to be part of it. Would you like to work in an industry where the product, the developer, the publisher and the consumer treat you badly? Exclusion is the problem, not people trying to open up the world of games. It's a matter of empathy.

 

Exactly. What these women fail to realize is that EVERYONE online gets harassed. "Old" (anyone over 30) people get harassed for being old, kids get harassed for being kids, gays get harassed for being gay, blacks get harassed for being black, whites get harassed for being white, Asians get harassed for being Asian, etc. Is it right? Hell no, that's why I generally don't play online. Far too many ignorant assholes I simply don't feel like dealing with.

So why do some women think the entire industry is out to get them personally? Pretty egotistical if you ask me. How about we focus less on making online gaming safe for women, and focus more on making it safe for everyone?

"You alien bastards picked the wrong time of the month to fuck with me."

I would totally buy that game, no joke. Saving speedo wearing hunks instead of babes, going to male strip clubs instead of female ones, basically Duke Nukem with the gender roles reversed. That'd be awesome.

 

i agree there should be a duchess nukem, that could work so well haha.

the only way to change an institution is by being part of it and helping to shape it be the catalyst for change.
people don’t care who makes a game as long as its a well made game.

no-one is stopping anyone from starting up a publishing firm or a development studio based on their sex.

 

I would say that those examples are not men sexualized, but male power fantasies in my opinion. I don't think the main intent behind those designs would be to appeal to women. Intent is key.

I do see your point regarding romance novels, but one has to wonder why videogames would only be targeted at males, when there are plenty of women playing them. That other mediums objectify gender does not make it right, tough.

It's not a $100,000 video, it's a series of videos. Remember that the original goal was $6,000 dollars. Also, the video is not a 23 minutes video about Popeye and King Kong, it traces the "damsel in distress" trope from the very beginning, in greek mythology, and how lazy and cliche it has become. Have you seen it? Second hand descriptions on the net might not be accurate, but actually distortions from her opponents. In my opinion, watching the video is the only way to know for sure, and I do like to see things before criticizing them fully.

 

Is game developing the only tool available to people to change things? Is your solution to not change things, and if women don't like it, then create their own?